That last sentence is key. Rather than force the user to structure their input based on the computer's constraints (and probably waste time learning/misundersta

That last sentence is key. Rather than force the user to structure their input based on the computer's constraints (and probably waste time learning/misunderstanding the computer's constraints), they forced the computer to (generally) output meaningful results given arbitrary user input. Can anyone thing of examples where the free software community has successfully created software that does this? I'm thinking of VLC trying-- and often succeeding-- in playing most of the damaged files I've thrown at it. But I'm drawing a blank otherwise...